


i can be your streetlight

by crookedsaint



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Brief smoking mention, Chicago Firefighters Shadows, Fact-checked Fire Engine Maintenance, Gen, Ghosts, Maincord-Inappropriate Language, Station Fourteen, welcome to more musings on butchness and blaseball with your old pal crookedsaint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29775798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint
Summary: A snapshot in the life of two volunteer reserve blaseball players.
Relationships: Tyler Leatherman & Zi Sliders
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11
Collections: We Are Fanwork Creators





	i can be your streetlight

**Author's Note:**

> title is from crowded table by the highwomen! i have unintentionally become deeply invested in the firefighters shadows in the last [checks watch] three hours? 
> 
> tyler uses he/him and she/her and zi uses she/her!
> 
> hope you enjoy!

Some people would call her crazy, working two jobs when one of them is firefighting. Those people hadn’t met the hardcores over at Station Nine, with their full-time major league blaseball team and volunteer hours and excessive overtime. Maybe they’ve just gotta get their minds off things. Drown out their guilty consciences from playing a blood splort with as much work as possible. Whatever it is, it’s not the same thing that drives Tyler Leatherman to the firehouse after two days loading a monstrous set into the James M. Nlederlander. 

Technically, what drives him there is a worn but sturdy Tloyota pickup. Bright red and sensible, with a good amount of spirit to her still after over a decade. But if you’re not being overly literal about it, he’s here to serve his city. Simple as that. If Mx. Chicago cornered you one night on your smoke-break-that’s-really-a-sandwich-break-since-you-quit-back-in-grad-school-anyway and asked you to help her save people’s lives, would  _ you _ turn her down?

Ty slams the door of that same red truck and stamps her way up the stairs, shaking the snow off her boots as soon as she’s under the overhang. Supposedly, the weather’s supposed to let up soon. She’s not sure she believes it. 

“Tyler! You’re back!”

“I’m back every three days, Zi.”

Zi’s face emerges from the old wooden door, the grain distorting as light refracts just-barely-wrong through her round features. “Yes, but you  _ know  _ I’m not good with time! Especially during the siestas!”

Ty sighs. She makes for the door handle, trying as usual not to think too hard about opening a door  _ through  _ her coworker. “You don’t have to go to games if it’s giving you  _ withdrawals _ .”

“But I like them! They help me keep track of the days.” Zi zooms back into the hall, dipping behind the reception counter and rattling the pencils in their mugs. “And they’re full of hauntings.”

“So you say.” He unlocks the closet with practiced ease and picks up his tools. Ty always comes dressed and ready, just in case. No stop in the locker room. No stop in the kitchen. Not too much time spent gossiping with the local station ghost before sitting down with her friends the engines and setting to blissful, half-automatic work.

“It’s a game mechanic, now! Esme Ramsey, she’s getting possessed during games. Maybe I could finally play.”

“You sure you want to, kid?” 

“I’m older than you.” On the technicality of dying over ninety years ago, but it had only been her junior year of college.

“Sure are.” Ty locks the door behind him. Strides down the hall, into the garage, and down to the engines. “Still. You have been watching the news, right? The Crabs just got sent straight on Up for their troubles.”

His only cue that Zi is following him is the faint breeze on his neck as he walks past a closed window, her voice thrown ahead of him even as her psychic presence lags behind. “I want to know what it’s like up there, don’t you?”

“Nope. Hope I never step out on the field.”

“Your hair looks different.”

Ty does her best to hide her surprise at the change of topic. “Yeah, I shaved it again.” She runs her hand over the back, tiny curls still fresh-cut sharp under her fingers. “Jenna in costuming, she came to the fundraiser that one time—she told me it was looking nice. So I cut it.”

“Oh.” A chill fills the room, leaching in from outside. Zi flickers into visibility again beside him. “Would you be mad if I said I think it looks nice, too?”

“I didn’t cut it ‘cause I was mad,” she explains, bending over slightly to pop up the cab and get to the engine itself. “I cut it because if Jenna in costuming thinks it looks nice, it’s too long. She’s got that seventies sensibility, you know?”

“When was that, again?”

“Forget it.” Ty pops off the oil cap. Same song and dance as always. Same smooth, comfortable rhythm.

“Can you cut my hair?”

“Hm?”

“It’s just—” the intercom on the wall beeps long, short, short, then short, short, long, then long, long, then long, short, short, short.  _ Dumb _ , spelled out in Morse. “Shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, no. Come on.” Ty turns around and leans back on the engine, well-familiar with which parts won’t get grease all over his station uniform. “The fluid checks can wait. You been thinking about this?”

“Well,” Zi begins. She dims, her smile dimming with it. Her braids curl a little at the ends, flickering with faint blue flame. “My mom got my hair did like this. For her wedding. I didn’t exactly ask to die with it and keep it forever.”

“I’m sure we could figure out some way to cut it. If you can pass through walls, surely—”

“It’s just.” The temperature in the room’s been steadily dropping, but it’s only now that a chill runs up Ty’s spine. “I don’t know. Everyone’s getting cool haircuts. Taking pictures with the fans.”

“ _ Everyone  _ is a strong word.”

“They’re all out on press tours. Siesta’s ending! Things are changing!”

“Not for me, kid.” Ty taps a knuckle against the engine. “Same greasemonkey you know and love.”

“They have all the fun and we’re here stuck the same,” Zi grumbles. The flames gutter out, leaving only the faint smell of burning plastic behind. “Every time I think about siesta ending, it makes me furious. They get to go back to being heroes and we—”

“Get to go back to standing behind them and getting all the good, honest work done,” Ty finishes. “Your work with the Dispatch is pretty heroic, by my eye.”

“No one cares about that.” Zi sits down on a workbench, looking every bit heavy with her age despite her weightlessness. “No one’s going to see me anymore once the games start. They’ll all be looking at  _ them. _ ”

“I won’t pretend it wasn’t nice to have a break,” he says. He makes sure to choose his words carefully, like he’s explaining to some out-of-town director why adding eight practicals onto an already-hung moving set is an especially stupid idea when they’re only a week out from opening. “But come on. We can still see you. You’re not disappearing to the people who matter.”

“You don’t get it. I know it’s basically the same as before. That’s the  _ problem,  _ Tyler! Siesta ends, and they’re going back, and we’re still here.” Zi’s gaze turns accusatory, and a suddenly unwelcome warmth spreads through the garage. “You didn’t sign up for blaseball. But I did, and I want to play. Or at least do anything but wait around on  _ retainer  _ for a bunch of half-assed—”

“Whoa, there.” Ty holds out a hand. “Don’t go setting fires. You don’t mean that.”

“Then shave my hair,” Zi says. It’s matter-of-fact, almost cutting. “Figure it out. If setting things on fire is the only thing I can change, I’ll take it, ‘cause no matter how many  _ mixers  _ and  _ galas  _ and all that other shit they invite us to, they’re out there and we’re still stuck.”

There’s a sound like fire filling a room, the flash-point moment that leaves what looks so stomach-turningly like gasoline trails struck into the floor. Zi’s gone. She’s listening, of course—always is—but she’s taken off somewhere to work things out herself. Ty lets the tension fall out of her shoulders and gets back to routine maintenance.

He leaves the radio off, just in case he ends up catching Zi’s thoughts in it while she’s still too heated to keep herself separate from the Dispatch. Instead, he muses on the memories she’d mentioned. The Station Nine wackos can keep him company for the morning. Every party they host is certainly a memorable affair. Loads of colorful folks with colorful stories to tell. Sure, it’s not like Ty doesn’t run into your standard vampires, nature spirits, sentient objects, and so on at the theater or even just on his average visit to the deli. It’s not about that. Thing is, blaseball seems to have a knack for attracting the ones who aren’t content to act decent in decent company.

Even the regular people were a bit off, in Ty’s opinion. She’d met some kid a little older than Zi (by looks alone, she reminded herself) who’d apparently been victim to a Decree exchanging him with his mirror self. She’d asked them all the polite questions, of course, and they’d reciprocated with some tangent about the Hall of Flame and burnt offerings that she could hardly wrap her head around at the time. The world those people live in, where ghosts are chained underwater and fires aren’t put out by rain—she can hardly fathom it. At least the fellow had seemed to be doing what he could to help.

Ty nearly spills coolant all over herself. Of course.

“Zi?”

The feeling of sunlight in the snow creeps along the back of her neck, cautious and a bit hostile.

“You ever tried burning something to see if you can use it?”

The room falls eerily silent. Then: the same sequence of dots and dashes as before.

“Sure, sure.” Ty chuckles and wipes her hands off with a rag. “But you’re seriously telling me you’re not down to experiment?”

Zi is back on the workbench, her smile back along with her. “You got me there.”

Ty makes sure to smile back. “There’s some old clippers in the bathroom from my rookie days. They’ll be perfect.”

This time, when warmth fills the room, it’s welcome as welcome can be. A refuge from the cold outside. An acknowledgement that, even if they don’t play blaseball, the Shadows at Station Fourteen are a team, through and through.


End file.
